


One of Those Couples

by elle_stone



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Fake/Pretend Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-16
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:49:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8866501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elle_stone/pseuds/elle_stone
Summary: "Octavia is always bothering me about how I only ever talk about my classes, or dorm council stuff, or work study and she thinks I need more of a social life. So,” he shrugs, “I told her I had one.” “You know that making up a fake girlfriend is more pathetic than just not dating anyone, right? If your sister wasn’t worried about your social life before, I’d say she should be now.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Moucaaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Moucaaa/gifts).



> Happy holidays to cupcakeblake!! And best wishes to you in the new year! I hope you enjoy this fic, my attempt at a fluffy fake-dating scenario that...sort of? turned out how it was supposed to.

Good evening, listeners. You're tuned in to W-ARK, Arkadia University's first and only student-run radio station. This is your favorite DJ, Raven, of _Mecha Station_ , Ark U's weekly source of the latest on space exploration, AI innovation, technological wizardry, and speculation on the zombie apocalypse. And no, exams haven't so addled your brain that you don't know what day it is anymore. I have wandered away from my usual Wednesday night time slot to take over Jasper Jordan's _PH Imbalance_. Lucky bastard finished his last exam yesterday and has already skipped town.

And since I’m on air on an unusual night, I thought I’d host an unusual show. Tonight, on this last snowy evening before the campus shuts down for the holidays and most of us head on home, I thought I’d share a personal story with any of you who might still be here, listening. I hope you’re curled up somewhere nice and warm—and not just because the temperature _just_ dipped below freezing outside. Because this story, well, it might be enough to make even a few hardened pessimists believe in the good sort of fate.

But don’t let me spoil the ending. 

When I say ‘personal story’ I don’t mean that it happened to me, exactly. This is a story about a friend of mine. You might know him. His name is Bellamy, he’s an insufferable history major, Wallace dorm President, four-time reigning trivia night champion and, most importantly for this tale, the world’s best—or at least, the world’s most well-meaning—big brother…

*

Somewhere between Monty insisting that Bryan just _has_ to _chill out_ about the Bio final, and Miller accidentally dumping half a container of salt on his fries, Bellamy realizes that not only has he zoned out, but his complete disconnect from reality has actually become noticeable. Which, given that finals start tomorrow and everyone’s in a near-constant state of mentally-elsewhere, is really saying something.

“Heeee-ey, Earth to Blake, come in Bellamy Blake,” Raven’s voice, in a slight sing-song lilt, breaks through his thoughts, and he snaps to attention on a flash of chipped red nails sliding back and forth in front of his face. “Where did you go off to?”

“Nowhere. Just thinking,” he answers, without any real hope that this will be taken as a good enough answer by anyone.

“Yeah, I know you were thinking, that’s where I asked where you were,” Raven says, with a slowness that says she thinks he’s being a bit slow on the uptake here. She reaches across the table, her hand hovering over Miller’s fries, and asks, “Do you mind?”

He shoves the whole plate in her direction. “Knock yourself out. My blood pressure’s rising just looking at them. So what’s wrong with Bellamy? Freaking out about finals? Join the club.”

“Bellamy doesn’t need to freak out about finals,” Raven—who has been meticulously prepared for and completely at peace about every test she’s ever taken—retorts shortly.

“Bellamy’s taking Killer Kane’s poli sci final so I think he probably does,” Bryan points out, and before Monty can chime in, Bellamy cuts them all off:

“ _Bellamy_ is sitting at this table so you don’t need to talk about him in the third person. And I’m not thinking about finals.”

A long silence, edging on awkward, follows, as Raven shakes the worst of the salt off her fry and everyone exchanges glances. The looks they give each other tell Bellamy that perhaps he sounded a bit more stressed and on edge than he’d meant to. “So really,” Raven asks, after a beat-beat of silence, the loud crunch of Bryan biting into a pickle, “what’s bothering you?”

‘Nothing’ might work as an answer if he were only talking with Miller and Bryan and Monty, because he and Miller have forged their friendship on not forcing awkward emotional conversations on each other, and Bryan doesn’t know him well enough to know when he’s lying, and Monty steadfastly avoids anything that might turn into drama—but Raven’s at lunch with them too, and there’s no avoiding her steady, expectant gaze.

Bellamy picks up his sandwich, wastes some time fiddling with it, because the lettuce is coming out from underneath the bread, and that’s annoying, then clears his throat and shrugs and says, “Octavia called me this morning. She’s, uh, coming to visit next week. After her finals wrap up.”

“I don’t see the problem with that,” Monty says, shrugging a little as he spears a tomato with his fork. “Aren’t you and your sister close?”

“Yeah, it isn’t that. It’s…” He trails off again, looking resolutely out past Monty’s shoulder to the next table over, where some hipster in a beanie and black frame glasses is stapling a poster to the bulletin board. He does not want to tell them. They are going to laugh at him. If he were anyone but himself, he would laugh too. “It’s that I told O I have a girlfriend and she’s so excited to meet her that she’s insisting we all have dinner together on Friday and I don’t know how to tell her that we can’t,” he admits, finally, in a rush, and then takes a big bite of sandwich so he won’t have to say anything more for a few more moments, at least.

“Wh-what?” Miller asks, the word slightly distorted by the tentative laughter he is trying, and failing, to hold back. The rest of them still seem unable to form a reaction at all, aside from a few small smiles, like they can’t believe they’re really hearing this were their own ears. Like wow, Bellamy is getting caught up in an incredibly _stupid_ lie. And to his kid sister of all people. “Do you have a secret girlfriend none of us know about or—?”

“Or Octavia is always bothering me about how I only ever talk about my classes, or dorm council stuff, or work study and she thinks I need more of a social life. So,” he shrugs, “I told her I had one.”

“You know that making up a fake girlfriend is more pathetic than just not dating anyone, right?” Monty asks. He shakes his head slowly as Bellamy just rolls his eyes. “If your sister wasn’t worried about your social life before, I’d say she should be now.”

“Hey, I have a social life, okay?” He plants his elbows on the table and gestures out at the rest of them. “I’m here right now instead of studying or working. It was just… I don’t know, easier to tell her I had a girlfriend than detail every social interaction I have in a day. Like a shorthand. And I never expected her to actually want to _meet_ this person. I figured I’d just…spin it as long as I could and then tell O we broke up amicably or something.”

“That doesn’t sound like a great plan,” Raven says idly. She has one hand half-hiding her mouth, so he’s pretty sure she’s still smiling.

“Well telling her about the girlfriend might have been an impulse decision,” he grumbles back. Then he lets his shoulders slump, and rubs at his eyes with the heels of his palms, wallowing for a moment in the renewed realization of just how pathetic his situation is.

“Hey.” Raven shoves at his shoulder, getting his attention again. “Don’t do that. This is not the Bellamy I know. You’re going to rally. Octavia’s coming next week, right? And when she gets here, you have three options: you can admit the truth, and face some degree of probably deserved mocking; you can continue telling her lies, like that your girlfriend went home early or is too busy to meet up, and rouse your sister’s suspicions; or…you could bring a girlfriend to dinner.”

Bellamy just stares at her, slight frown between his eyebrows. “I don’t think I’m going to find myself in a serious relationship in the next four days,” he says. “That’s a little short notice.”

“I didn’t say anything about bringing a _real_ girlfriend.”

“Are you suggesting some sort of blow-up doll scenario?” Miller cuts in, not bothering to hold back a grin, as Bryan adds, “I think that would _really_ Octavia worry.”

“No, no,” Raven answers, wrinkling her nose with irritation. “And by the way: ew. No, I’m suggesting like a real girl _pretending_ to be Bellamy’s girlfriend. Just for the day. She comes to dinner, she meets Bellamy’s sister, she’s friendly and cute, Octavia is reassured that her brother doesn’t _totally_ live in his books, and then after lunch everyone parts ways and Octavia is none the wiser.” She claps her hands once, then pretends to dust them off. “Easy.”

“Are you volunteering to be the girl?” Miller asks.

“No,” Raven shakes her head. “Wouldn’t work. She’s already met me, during family week freshmen year.”

“Then I don’t think the plan is as easy as you think it is,” Miller says. “Where are you going to find a girl who’s willing to be a fake girlfriend for a day, anyway?”

“Hey, stop—you’re both assuming I’m okay this plan,” Bellamy interrupts, before Raven can say anything more. “I should just admit the truth. It was a stupid, impulsive heat-of-the-moment lie and it’s not worth making it into a bigger deal than it is. I don’t need a big, elaborate, fake—”

“I know who you can ask.”

Bellamy stops, closes his mouth, and pivots his attention to Monty, at the same time as the others do. Monty’s been quiet for a while now, just listening, thinking—planning, apparently, and he looks completely undisturbed by Raven’s deceitful scheme, and equally oblivious to the suspicious looks his friends are giving him.

“Well, who?” Raven prods.

“Clarke. She lives down the hall from me in Wallace. Sophomore, Bio major I think, but really into art stuff too. She’s really…” He waves his fork through the air for a moment, thinking. “Intense.”

“‘Intense’ is one word for her,” Miller mumbles. And louder: “I know her, too. She was the stage manager on the production of _Peter Pan_ that Bryan and I worked on last spring. Bellamy, she is the _most_ single-minded, stubborn person I’ve ever met. Hands down. Needed everything done exactly her way.”

“The production went really well, though,” Bryan adds, with a small half-shrug.

“Well, yeah,” Miller admits. “But are you sure you want to get involved with her, Bellamy?”

“Fake involved,” Raven clarifies.

Bellamy just sighs, and picks up one of Miller’s disgustingly over-salted fries. He’s pretty sure this plan, ridiculous and doomed to failure as it is, has already grown bigger than him, larger than his ability to slam on the brakes. And a part of him doesn’t even want to. He doesn’t like the idea of continuing to lie to O, but he can’t let go of the possibility that he might be able to get out of his last lie with a minimal amount of embarrassment and trouble. And if the dinner goes well, it might help Octavia’s peace of mind; he knows that her prying questions and gentle mocking are just her way of saying that she worries about him almost as much as he worries about her. 

And really, he can’t help thinking, it might be sort of _fun_.

“What makes you think Clarke would even be up for playing the fake girlfriend role, anyway?” he asks.

“Well actually,” Monty admits, with a moment’s hesitation, “she might have a favor to ask you in return.”

*

And that, listeners, is how our hero Bellamy found himself playing the lead in his very own personal romantic comedy. Right about now, many of you are probably thinking: but seriously, what are the actual chances that this scheme could work? How likely is it that two people who have never met before could successfully fake enough chemistry to fool a sister who has known Bellamy for eighteen years? To be honest, I had some of those worries myself. Even though I was the origin of this brilliant plan. But Monty seemed pretty sure that Clarke and Bellamy would hit it off, and Bellamy agreed to talk to her and see what happened, so a meeting was arranged…

*

The basement of Wallace dorm is unfinished, windowless, well-used but with an air of creepy gray abandonment throughout. From the bottom of the stairs a hallway, the walls painted a drab off-white--the floor the color of cracked pavement--leads off to the right, ending at the laundry room and a small alcove, where an ancient tv and VHS player sit surrounded by some castaway chairs. It’s an odd place for a meeting. But Bellamy agrees to it anyway. He’s halfway down the hall when he hears a voice from next to the tv say: “This meeting would be a lot less eerie if the basement didn’t look so grim.”

“It would also be a lot less eerie if we were meeting upstairs instead of down here,” he answers, peering into the darkness to try to catch a glimpse of whoever’s hiding in the shadows. She sounds, he thinks, undoubtedly dramatic—but confident, with a sense of humor, as if she wouldn’t be offended if she saw him smiling. And...is it irrational to think the voice sounds cute?

The girl who steps out of the shadows, slowly, chin up and arms crossed against her chest and her hip cocked out just a little to the side, is _definitely_ cute. In a blonde and blue-eyed and round-faced way. Bellamy wouldn't say he has a type, but if he did, it probably wouldn't be her. And yet. His stomach does a little flip anyway. Maybe it's the way she's looking at him, not like she's judging him for the frankly embarrassing favor he's asking her, but like she's sizing him up, trying to figure him out.

"Okay," she concedes. "But I can't do my laundry upstairs. I can't watch a VHS upstairs."

"And how many VHS tapes do you own, exactly?"

"There are some upstairs in the common room still. Anyway, my point is, everyone has to be down here sometimes, so why does it have to look so drab? Don't you think it would look much better and more inviting with a series of colorful murals all along here?" She gestures behind her, and then to the other side of the hallway and the wall behind Bellamy.

"I think just about anything would beat industrial eggshell," he answers. He gives her a good stare, mirroring her appraising stance, and adds, "I'm beginning to think you called me down here under false pretenses."

"I don't think the guy who wants to introduce his sister to a fake girlfriend should be talking about 'false pretenses' like that." The words are barbed, but the corners of her mouth twitch up, like she doesn't really want them to sting. "Monty told me the whole thing. He also reminded me that you're the Wallace House President and you might be able to help me get my project approved."

"Your project to paint the basement walls?"

Clarke just gives him a look, all eyebrow and head tilt and tense around the mouth, that says he's really not getting her artistic vision here. "My project to turn the walls into a large-scale canvas for Wallace's artists. Including this Wallace artist, who has already claimed this part," she half-turns, and gestures widely to the space next to the laundry room doorway. For a moment, she just stares at the drab expanse, lost in visions of its future, her grandiose plans. Then she glances back over her shoulder at Bellamy and says, matter-of-factly, "It has the best light."

"Yeah," Bellamy murmurs vaguely, a little lost in thought himself, because 'cute' doesn't even begin to describe her when she has that faraway, thoughtful look on her face. But he shakes himself out of _that_ train of thought quickly, and when Clarke turns around to face him again, he just shrugs and says, "Yeah. Sure. Shouldn't be too hard to get everyone on board. First dorm meeting of the semester is the second week of January so...you can probably start in February, if you can organize everything that fast."

"I can organize that fast," she shoots back, automatically, then pauses and looks at him, a slight, appraising squint to her eyes. "You're not going to argue with me about this?"

"Why should I argue with you? It's a good idea. A great way to leave our mark on the dorm for future classes." He gives the wall behind him a short pat. "And it might make doing laundry down here at two in the morning a little bit less like walking into the middle of a horror movie."

Clarke is smiling at him by now, back with that look on her face that's just really _adorable_ , her lip caught between her teeth and her eyes bright even in the basement gloom. "You do a lot of two a.m. laundry?" 

"Oh, all the time," he says, pretends like this is something to brag about, exaggerated _no problem_ gesture as he tries to decide what to do with his hands. The basement is known for being hot all year round, and that’s why he feels a creeping heat coming up around his ears. That's all. "So, that's the deal? I help you get your project off the ground and you come have dinner with me and my sister?"

"And pretend to be your girlfriend," Clarke finishes. "Yes. That’s the deal. So," she lets her back thump against the wall, leaning against it and watching him, hands in her pockets, "what sort of girlfriend am I going to be? What did you tell your sister?"

"Not much of anything," he admits. "I only mentioned you—her—"

"The imaginary girlfriend."

"Yeah. Once. Practically in passing. I didn't say anything much except that we met because we live in the same dorm and it's going really well. You don't have to be any _sort_ of girlfriend, just...be yourself. That will be easier anyway." He lets out a deep breath and lets his gaze wander up to the wall above Clarke's shoulder. "More believable."

For a long while, Clarke doesn't answer. Bellamy doesn't know her well enough to be able to tell if she's just thinking, or judging, or having second thoughts.

Then she says, "But," and pushes herself off the wall, crosses the space between them, "but what sort of girlfriend would your sister find the most _realistic_? Who would she expect you to date? Someone demonstrative? Flirty? Shy?" She grins. "Eye candy? Do I just show up on your arm and look hot?" At this last, she links her arm through his arm and looks up at him, obviously trying to keep a straight face, failing, and standing too close, much closer than she needs to all alone in the basement dark. And his throat feels dry and he has to swallow hard before he speaks. 

"Clarke," he manages, finally, "I think if you just be yourself we'll be fine."

*

And so the plot thickens. Arkadians, however many of you are still out there, on campus, listening, I’m sure you are on the edge of your seats. Will Bellamy and Clarke make a believable couple? Will Clarke hit it off with her fake boyfriend’s real sister? Will the undeniable sparks between them grow into something… more?

Keep listening.

*

Every time Octavia comes to visit, she insists they go out to dinner at the Acropolis, a squat greasy spoon and perennial Arkadia University hangout two blocks from the campus, because she maintains that they make the best peach pie she has ever tasted. This year, she announces that she might have found a competitor, though, in a small bakery just a ten minute walk from her dorm. But she and Bellamy still end up sitting across from each other in a Polis booth by the window, reading the menu that Bellamy is sure his sister has memorized ages ago. Clarke is finishing a philosophy final, and Bellamy's stomach is in knots waiting for her to arrive.

When she does, stomping the snow off her boots and shaking it out of her hair, small scattered flakes still clinging to the loose blonde waves, and her shoulders still hunched up against the chill December wind, a different sort of flutter fills his chest.

"Is that her?" Octavia whispers to him, and he startles to hear her voice so close. "The blonde by the door? She's pretty."

"She's beautiful," he answers.

The words come out barely more than a whisper, and if Octavia hears them, she doesn't comment.

A moment later, Clarke has caught sight of them, smiling brightly and waving as she makes her way around the crowded tables to their booth. She looks stupidly radiant, pink-cheeked and cheery, if maybe a little worn about the eyes. All of the lies Bellamy's been telling himself over the last two days—that Clarke seems pretty cool and they might end up friends after all this is done, and that would be fine, more than enough—start glaring brighter than the Christmas lights blinking red and green around the window frames.

When Clarke reaches their table, she leans down and presses a quick kiss to Bellamy's cheek, which catches him off guard, although it shouldn't—he misses his chance to turn and meet her lips—was he even supposed to meet her lips?—and a pause, bordering on awkward and too long, must break before he can manage her name, and "You made it."

"Barely," she answers, right on the next beat, and rolls her eyes at herself. The response is just a little too fast. _She's nervous_ , Bellamy thinks. And then, with equal certainty, _And she'd never admit it._

He reaches for her hand and gives it a squeeze. 

Clarke gives no sign that she notices the gesture, but her voice sounds a little more natural when she adds, "Philosophy didn't kill me this time," and it's only slightly weird when she turns to Octavia, lets out a breath, smiles in a tight and formal way, and says, "You must be Bellamy's sister." She drops Bellamy's hand to offer it to O, but instead, a surprise to Bellamy himself as much as Clarke, Octavia stands up and wraps her arms around Clarke in a hug.

Bellamy has had plenty of cold-feet moments over the last few days. He's contemplated the potential disaster that is Raven's plan, compared it to other notorious Raven schemes, tried to predict the likelihood of disaster, and half-convinced himself a dozen times that he should just back out. But mostly he's just been worried that Octavia would see right through them, and he'd be caught in his lie. He's never considered the concern that would be right at the front of his mind if this were a real meet-the-sister dinner: that he and O have been each other's everything for so long, for almost their whole lives, that to bring in any new person, even the nicest, smartest, funniest, prettiest person, is always a considerable risk. No matter how eager Octavia was to meet his supposed new girlfriend, still he'd assumed in the back of his mind that she would be on the defensive, that she'd judge Clarke harshly as a potential usurper to their careful familial equilibrium.

But Octavia hugs her almost as tightly as she hugged Bellamy when he came to pick her up at the station, and when they separate, and everyone sits down again, she's staring at Clarke like she's the sister O has always wanted.

Clarke looks somewhat abashed under the attention, but she keeps her expression friendly, and decidedly game.

"It's really great to meet you," Octavia says, finally, to break a silence that's going on just a few moments too long. "You, uh, have a smudge of something on the side of your nose, by the way."

"Hmm?” Clarke glances up from the menu she was starting to pretend to read. There’s a slight furrow between her brow, as if Octavia’s words have caught her off guard, as if she needs a moment, still, to process them. “Where?” She starts rubbing at her nose, a gesture that should not be as cute as it is, and not least because she is focusing on completely the wrong spot.

“Here,” Bellamy says, and takes her chin in his hand, tilts her face toward him. Carefully, with an instinctive gentleness, he cleans the smudge off with his thumb, and only then does he realize just how intimate, in the everyday, normal sense of the word, the gesture is. He has never touched her in any but the most casual of ways. He has never had reason to; he does not know her. But the skin of her cheek is soft and if he moved his thumb just the slightest bit down he would be able to touch her lips, and he cannot help but let the moment of contact linger. He cannot help but let this random collection of seconds become a _moment_ at all.

“Is that—” he clears his throat, drops his hand. “Is that charcoal?”

“Yeah,” Clarke answers, and breaks his gaze, shakes her head just the slightest like she’s coming back to herself too. “Yeah, I was doing some pre-exam sketching earlier. It helps me calm down and focus.” She picks up the menu, looks down at it without seeing it at all, Bellamy’s sure, then drops it again and looks up at him and smiles, like she’s trying to be natural about this. He wonders if she was shaken, too, as he was. “I can’t believe I’ve been walking around like this all day. Embarrassing.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he says, shrugging, voice light. “I think it’s a good look.”

Clarke opens her mouth to answer, and he just knows, somehow, just from a glance at her face that she’s going to have some sharp retort to that. And that there will be no real teeth to the bite. And he can’t wait to hear it. But before she can say a word, Octavia cuts in with, “You two are really cute. Did you know that?”

“Not _too_ cute, though, I hope?” Clarke asks. She gives Bellamy’s arm a squeeze, just above the wrist, and he knows she’s asking the question of him, too: _should we be toning it down?_

All he does is put his hand on top of hers.

She twines their fingers together and adds, “I mean, I don’t want to be one of those sickeningly sweet couples that’s always driving everyone around them up the wall with cuteness.”

“Oh, I don’t think Bellamy’s capable of that,” Octavia promises. “Like the silly nicknames, flowers and stuffed animals, carving your names in a heart in a tree thing—that’s not really my brother.”

“I’m capable of—some of that stuff,” he argues. Then, feeling bold: “On our first date, I won Clarke a stuffed bear at a ring toss at the carnival. That was romantic.” He presses a kiss to her knuckles, just to complete the real-couple illusion, and she slides a little closer in the booth, until the side of her leg touches his leg.

“No way.” Octavia is still watching them, slight skeptical smile on her face; she doesn’t quite believe the bear story, Bellamy can tell, but a part of her _wants_ to. “No way you won her a bear, Bell, that’s so…cliché. You’re just messing with me.”

“Of course he’s messing with you,” Clarke answers matter-of-factly, as a waitress arrives at their table at last. Their conversation is interrupted by the process of ordering, a small flurry of last minute unnecessary glances at menus, and by the time the waitress has left again, Bellamy’s quite sure the carnival topic will be dropped. So it’s a surprise when Clarke says, almost out of nowhere, “Actually he won me a stuffed gorilla, at a strong-man contest. You know, where you have swing a hammer and try to ring a little bell? He was just being modest, saying it was a ring toss.”

She says this with such a straight face, not even a glance out of the corner of her eye to catch Bellamy’s eye, and does not back down for such a long time—even as Octavia waits, same incredulous expression on her face, for the final punchline, the gotcha moment at last—that finally, Octavia just cracks. “Okay,” she admits. “So my brother can be…sort of a romantic. Sometimes.”

“With the right person,” he says, and presses a quick kiss against Clarke’s temple. This is probably too much—it makes Octavia roll her eyes—but Clarke just whispers, “That was pretty sweet,” so he doesn’t beat himself up over it. Before he can overthink anything, he asks his sister, “So…how did your semester go? You haven’t said anything about it.”

“It went fine, but I don’t want to talk about it. I just handed in my last paper, I need a school _cleanse_.” She draws out the last word, waves her hand through the air dismissively, like she’s sweeping away all of the stress and work of the last weeks, and then leans forward again. “Talk to me about you guys! What was your first date like?”

Bellamy opens his mouth to answer, but his mind goes blank. Utterly blank. He doesn’t usually have a hard time coming up with a convincing lie—that is, in fact, how he ended up with a fake date in the first place—but right now his mind might as well have crickets chirping in it, he is so devoid of any ideas.

It's actually a little bit frightening.

So when Clarke’s voice says, easy and clear and with the simple confidence of the truth, “In the kitchen at Wallace,” he feels a a great weight of tension leave his shoulders. “I was stress baking, pretty late at night and Bellamy came down for—what were you doing, again?”

“Grabbing leftovers from lunch from the fridge,” he says, and this time, with that one nudge, the story comes to him easily. “I was starving.”

“And we got to talking about how eerie the dorm kitchen is after dark when no one else is around, and how annoying it is that this year’s freshmen _never_ wash their dishes, and how bad all of the food in the cafeteria is except for the omelets, which are delicious, and other things like that, and before I knew it the cookies I’d put in the oven had burned and I—” She cuts herself off, and looks up at Bellamy suddenly as if she'd gotten too caught up in her own illusion, and she’s startled to see the real him right next to her. As if she has just realized something quite important. As if she’s seeing him now for the first time.

He stares back at her, the corner of his mouth quirking up in a smile. “Yeah,” he answers. “And me too.”

Because he thinks he understands. They're nothing to each other, yet. But he wants to know if she's the sort of person he could talk all night with in the kitchen, under the hard bright lights, while the dorm sleeps all around them and the dark night presses in against the windows, until they lose all sense of time and the cookies burn. He wants to know, and he has this feeling like she just might be.

Octavia is saying something but he hardly hears her.

The moment passes, in time, and eventually the waitress arrives with their food, and conversation continues in its normal ebbs and flows. For the rest of the evening, Clarke sits with her legs pressed against his under the table, her arm occasionally bumping against his as they eat. The booths at Acropolis are huge, big enough to seat four people to one side, easy, five if you’re willing to squash and be squashed—Bellamy knows this from experience—but he never tries to slide away from her, never regrets for a moment her presence so undeniably, unforgettably close.

*

Listeners, if you've been waiting for the big reveal, for Bellamy's scheme to be exposed, for some sort of public shaming scene—well, you're listening to the wrong story. That wouldn't be very festive, would it? This is not a story about how liars, like cheaters, never prosper.

No, this is a story about how sometimes we find—if not love, then something that could someday become love—in the oddest places.

Is that too sappy of me, listeners?

Just call it giddiness from the end of exams.

Bellamy and Clarke, if you're listening—and I know you are, because who would miss a broadcast of _Mecha Station_?—I have only one thing to say. When you get together for real, don't be one of those insufferable, joined at the hip couples. No one likes that.

And to the rest of you: safe travels and a wonderful New Year.

*

For a few moments, after she goes off the air, Raven sits alone in the night-quiet booth. She runs her fingertip around the edge of her headphones and she thinks about her best friend, and how he's pretty stupidly lucky, and about herself, and how she's probably more of a romantic than she ever wanted to let on, to anyone, and certainly not to some unknown number of late-semester stragglers. And she smiles a little.

Outside, the sky is clear and filled with bright points of light that tell her there are stars out there, somewhere, light years above her. She shoves her hands deep in her pockets, to save them from the sharp chill air, and crunches her way over the last of the previous week's snow, taking a short cut through the glance toward the parking. It is supposed to snow again before the week is out.

There's only car in the lot, parked right under a street lamp as if under a spotlight, and as Raven approaches one of the figures leaning against the hood raises his hand and waves.

"Great show," Bellamy says, as soon as Raven is within shouting distance. He has one hand in his pocket and the other arm around Clarke, slung casually over her shoulders while she leans against him, their closeness the most casual, somehow most expected thing in the world.

"See, you say great show, but you don’t sound like you mean it," she answers, words slow and suspicious, and expression utterly straight even as she sees Clarke start to smile.

"He thinks you made him sound too smitten," she clarifies.

"I never said 'smitten.'"

Raven crosses her arms against her chest. "I talked to you after that dinner. You were _undoubtedly_ smitten. Now can we continue this debate _inside_ the car, please, where it's warm?" She makes a big show of pretending to shiver, then herds the other two toward the vehicle, until the car doors are slamming shut with three dry thumps in the winter night. 

"If you were a real journalist, you would have interviewed Clarke, too," Bellamy says, over the grumble of his engine reluctantly turning over. "Then you could have talked about how she was completely taken with me when we first met, too."

"I wouldn't say ' _completely_ ,'" Clarke says, but Raven can tell from the slight movements of their heads, the shadows in front of her in the dark, that they've exchanged a look. 

Raven settles back in her seat, and watches the light blur and the pavement curve as Bellamy turns the car around, heading toward the parking lot exit. "I'll be extra thorough when I research the sequel, don't worry. I already know what I'm calling it. _Bellamy and Clarke's First Date: An Exposé_."

"Don't you think 'Exposé' is a little dramatic?" Bellamy asks over his shoulder.

“Yeah,” she answers. “It is. Because I know you. You're always dramatic."

Raven can’t see Bellamy’s face to tell if he’s offended, either actually offended or pretending to be, but he doesn’t say anything in answer. When Clarke asks, lightly, “What actually counts as our first date, anyway?” he just says, “ _Not_ the dinner with Octavia.”

“Obviously. Maybe the night after, when you came to my room to work on your history paper and let me sketch you?”

“No, that was just hanging out. What about the night we went together to Monty’s study break movie night in the Wallace common room?”

“How is spending time together alone in my room ‘hanging out’ but a night spent with a crowd of maybe ten other people is a date?”

“Because we had dinner together beforehand and we held hands during the whole movie. And by the end we were _definitely_ cuddling. It was basically a group date except without a lot of other couples.”

Clarke makes a vague humming sound, maybe a little skeptical, and lets a pause start to form. “But,” she says, then, a little quieter this time, and Raven’s quite sure they’ve forgotten they aren’t actually the only two people in the world—“actually we had our first kiss after that dinner with your sister. So maybe that was really our first date after all.”

Raven watches as Bellamy’s shadow hand picks up Clarke’s where it’s lying on the arm rest between them, and lifts it up, and gives it a kiss.

Which is basically just the last straw. Raven leans forward, shoves herself in between them, and announces, “You know, you’re about a second away from becoming _that_ couple. That too-cute couple that drives all their friends bonkers with how adorable they are.”

Bellamy glances back at her, just for a moment, then trains his eyes forward on the road again. “Sorry Raven,” he answers. “I think you’ll have to get used to that because we’re going to be around for a very long time.”

**Author's Note:**

> Arkadia U is based on my actual alma mater. In particular, Wallace dorm basement is exactly the basement of my dorm, except that we already have (actually kind of weird and creepy) student art on the walls. 
> 
> There is also a real restaurant called the Acropolis near the school--though it is not at all a greasy spoon, and no one I knew called it "Polis." I was going to change the name but it just fit too well with The 100 so I kept it as was.
> 
> I had to edit this very fast so I apologize for any mistakes and also for all of the awkward sections. If I find something very glaring I will clean it up post-reveal!


End file.
